Den brutna vithetens opacitet: om femininitetens renhet och färgskala
2016 (Swedish)In: Lambda Nordica, ISSN 1100-2573, E-ISSN 2001-7286, no 1-2, p. 46-79Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
White femininity embodies a complex position. It manages to occupy the presumed empty, universal position, which is held to be racially unmarked, untouched, and clean, meanwhile whiteness is always already articulated from a somatechnical knowledge and practice. This article discusses how “natural” makeup acts as an (in)visible extension (and enabling) of white (un)clean Russian and Swedish femininity, and also as a way to establish boundaries between “natural” and “artificial” white bodies. Makeup, as an extension of the white femininity, sculptures temporal fantasies about the present and the past, as well as fantasies of modern and outmoded bodies. These kinds of separations allow for a structuring of asymmetric differences between white modern/“civilized” and non-modern/“non-civilized” femininities. The idea of natural/clean bodies (and their practice of modification) privileges some white femininities over others, through the way that artificial/“impure” expressions are associated with the part of whiteness that is “marked” by devalued class and race expressions. This infected forms of whiteness thus acts as the Other in relation to the clean subjectivity of whiteness and operates as a flexibility that keeps the radiance of whiteness intact and unchallenged. Based on this paradox the article wishes to show how white femininity should be understood in terms of a fantasm and construction, and it is as a fantasm the opportunity arises to reject various forms of femininities, meanwhile the fantasm have different components depending on where it is formulated.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Stockholm: Föreningen Lambda Nordica , 2016. no 1-2, p. 46-79
Keywords [en]
emininity, whiteness, beauty, modernity, temporality, race, racialization, makeup, fashion, Russia, Russian femininity, somatechnics
National Category
Cultural Studies Gender Studies
Research subject
Baltic and East European studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-31870OAI: oai:DiVA.org:sh-31870DiVA, id: diva2:1068672
2017-01-262017-01-262025-10-07Bibliographically approved